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CAR T-cell Therapy

Supercharging Your Blood Cells to Defeat Cancer

Fighting Cancer by Turning On the Immune System

There’s a breakthrough in the fight against cancer, and it’s making headlines around the world. Called CAR T-cell therapy, the treatment supercharges a patient’s white blood cells to seek out and destroy cancer cells. Research at UChicago Medicine played a key role in the development of this exciting new immunotherapy for advanced blood cancers.

Select medical centers in the United States, including UChicago Medicine, led clinical trials of this new treatment for leukemia and lymphoma. After promising results in adults and children, the FDA has approved CAR T-cell therapy for the treatment of specific types of these blood cancers. UChicago Medicine is the first site in the country to be certified for FDA-approved CAR T-cell therapies for specific blood cancers in both adult and pediatric patients.

What Is CAR T-cell Therapy?

CAR (Chimeric Antigen Receptor) T-cell therapy is an emerging form of cancer immunotherapy, which involves supercharging a patient’s T cells to recognize and attack cancer cells.

During clinical trials of CAR T-cell therapy, 70 to 90 percent of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) went into remission after this treatment. And 40 to 50 percent of patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma experienced complete remission. While it’s too early to say these patients are cured, the results are encouraging for individuals with hard-to-treat (refractory) or relapsed leukemia or lymphoma. Learn more about how CAR T-cell therapy works.